I've always been an avid reader; from the age of seven I preferred reading to sleeping. I still do and when I first came to live in Bodrum all those years ago, my bag had more books than clothes. Finding something to read in the 1980s in Bodrum was often a struggle as my Turkish wasn't good enough to enjoy locally published novels. I was lucky to work in the travel industry and guests were very generous with their finished books. I would also collect old newspapers and magazines and save them for months to make sure I'd devoured every word. The local English speaking community wasn't very large but we shared what books we had, making sure the diving archaeologists were the last to read any paperback as they'd take them underwater with them and read as they slowly made their way to the surface. In the 1990s we had a book-swap in our travel agency which turned into a good way of meeting newly arrived English speakers on the peninsula and kept me in reading material if I wasn't too fussy. If someone had told me then that in less than two decades I'd own a machine which would let me read the book I wanted within 5 seconds of pressing a button, I would have thought them delusional.
Despite electronic readers and the internet, most of us still enjoy the feel of a real book and in Bodrum we have the chance every few months to peruse long tables of reading matter and pick up a good read for a few lira.
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| Linda Bennett, smiling as usual. |
About 10 years ago, a group concerned at the sad state of the peninsula's stray cats and dogs decided to form a charity to help them. Their efforts were thwarted by bureaucracy, but they did start raising money by holding jumble sales. It was soon noticed that the book stall run by Linda Bennett raised more than the rest of the stalls put together and thus the regular book sale was born.
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| John Lloyd behind the counter. |
Each year, over 5,000TL is raised and goes towards treating sick and wounded animals and neutering those living on the street.
The next sale is this Sunday, 5th April at Defne Restaurant in Bitez from 11:00 to 13:00. If you are in the Bodrum area, give your Kindles a rest and come along and reacquaint yourselves with the smell and feel of a real page turner.
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